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Automatic Updates

You only have to manually update your theme or plugin one more time! Current versions of all of our products come with automatic updates inside the WordPress dashboard. Each product you purchase comes with a license key. This key enables your site to automatically update your theme or plugin from wpforchurch.com’s server.

Better Pricing

Since launching WP for Church last year, I’ve been asked continually for a couple of different pricing options. The first is individual theme purchases. This is now possible! You can purchase an individual theme with lifetime updates and support (no recurring fees). Prices range from $19 to $29 per theme.

The All Access Membership is now $59 per year. Through the end of June, you can use the discount code TEN to join at the old price of $49.

Only want support for Sermon Manager? You can purchase a lifetime support package.

Support Ticket System

Our support forums were helpful, but it was very difficult to ensure everyone received timely support for their issues. The new support ticket system will allow WP for Church to deliver excellent support to each individual.

Special Offer

If you purchase any individual theme, you can get Church Pack Pro for free! Just add both items to your shopping cart, and use the discount code BONUS at checkout!

The post Many Improvements: Automatic Updates, Better Pricing & Better Support appeared first on WP for Church.

Edwards is a responsive WordPress theme for churches. It will resize nicely to any fit device (iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, etc). As with all of our themes, the colors may be easily changed within the theme options panel. It also fully supports WordPress’ post formats (audio, video, quote, status, aside, link, image, and gallery):

The post New Theme Preview: Edwards Church WordPress Theme appeared first on WP for Church.

That doesn’t mean nothing has been done at WP for Church though. There’s a brand new theme almost ready for release!

Goforth Theme Coming Next Week!

Here’s a sneak peek – it’s being used on my church planting website: Hope for LA County!

The post Church Planting and a New Theme: Goforth appeared first on WP for Church.

To change the defaults for new posts or pages, go to Settings → Discussion.

To disable comments on an existing post/page/sermon, open it up for editing. Now beneath the main content area, you should see a box labeled “Discussion”. Simply uncheck both boxes and save your changes.

What if you can’t see the discussion box? Then you need to click the “Screen Options” tab in the upper right corner of your screen and check the box to enable the discussion module. You still need to close the tab and navigate to the bottom of the page and uncheck “Allow Comments” in the discussion module.

The post How to Turn Off Comments appeared first on WP for Church.

If you want a little more in depth tutorial for Chrome Developer Tools, you want to visit this post. W3Schools is a great resource for CSS tutorials.

The post Using Google Chrome to Edit a WordPress Theme appeared first on WP for Church.

If you’ve been on the fence, now is the time to join WP for Church!

Latest Theme: Minimal Church

The post New Theme & Price Changes appeared first on WP for Church.

What’s New?

• Podcasting Support – Just go to Sermons → Settings to setup your feed.
• Enhanced image support for Preachers, Sermon Series, and Sermon Topics. docs
• New theme functions – making it easier for you to customize your theme. docs
• New taxonomy – Book of the Bible – this makes it easy to add sorting by book of the Bible.
• Improved CSS & shortcode display.
• New shortcode: [sermon-images]docs - demo
• New shortcode: [list-sermons]demo
• Improve page navigation styles with shortcode
• Improve admin interface & added a “Sermon Notes” field
• Fixed the views count for sermons
• Properly enqueueing all JavaScript and CSS
• Updated and corrected the translation files

If you have any problems with this version, please let me know in the comments!

Download RC2

RC2 – added shortcode to list all series, speakers, topics, or Bible books.

The post Sermon Manager 1.5 RC2 Now Available! appeared first on WP for Church.

Why “Beta”?

This update has significant changes & I want to give the opportunity for testing and refining before it’s added to the repository. There’s still several things on my to do list, but most users should have no issues with the release as is.

What’s New?

• Full podcasting support! – http://yourdomain.com/feed/podcast/
• Option to not use the built in template files (not working great for many themes)
• Many code enhancements
• Clean up of the sermon edit screen
• New sermon notes field for a pdf file (or similar)
• New audio player – mediaelements.js
• Fixed the views count for sermons

Potential Issues

If you are using custom template files, they may have to be modified before the audio player will work.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Download latest versionatest
New documentation of template tags
Beta 8 – fix video embeds
Beta 7 – bug fixes with images for series, speakers; CSS classes for each element.

The post Beta Release of Sermon Manager with Podcasting Support appeared first on WP for Church.

Don’t add an events plugin if no one will update it!

It’s a big turn off to see the special Sunday from two years ago still posted prominently on your home page. Don’t feel like you must have a calendar online. No event listing at all is much better than having old events. If you are using a plugin, like Church Pack Pro, to display your events, make sure events get added. It’s frustrating for site visitors to scroll through several months on your calendar and not find any events.

Don’t add an events plugin that is too complicated for your volunteers!

Churches are unique because they rely on volunteers to keep many things going. Church websites are often handled by an unpaid volunteer. Simple event administration helps ensure that events will actually be added to the site. Complex options make adding events potentially frustrating & therefore less likely to be done. Church Pack Pro was designed from the ground up with this problem in view. There are many fine events plugins available, but the multitude of options available within each plugin are overwhelming for the average church volunteer.

Don’t use an events plugin that doesn’t match the look of your site.

When you pick out a church WordPress theme, you work hard to represent the ministry of your church in an attractive way. You’ll upload your logo, change the color settings of the theme to match your church’s branding, and then embed a blue Google calendar right in the page. I’d prefer seeing a church website with a normal WordPress page listing events over an out of place calendar.

Now, here’s three things you should do:

Do make sure upcoming events are displayed prominently.

What good is it to add events to your site if no one can find them? Make sure the page displaying your events is listed as a top menu item. Having the upcoming events listed in a sidebar or footer widget is also essential. This is a great way to engage visitors to your website so they become visitors to your church. Your church website is the first impression of your church that many people will have. Make sure they know what’s going on by prominently displaying your upcoming events.

Do provide the event details at a glance.

When you are writing out the event description, make it easily scannable. Don’t add one long paragraph of text with all the details. Instead consider using a brief description along with several bullet points. This will make it easy for visitors to know exactly when the event is, where to go, and what they need to do. Consider what your description looks like to someone outside your church & make sure they can quickly understand what the event is about.

Do make it easy to register for an event.

This doesn’t have to be complex! Last week, I posted an article about adding a simple registration form for VBS into an event page. Providing a way for users to respond will increase their engagement and hopefully send more newcomers your way!

I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions below!

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